Front Panel Designer  Tip of the month
 
 
Although Front Panel Designer has many standard and not-so-standard shapes to choose from, it does not necessarily have exactly what you want. No worries, with a little extra effort you can create a custom object and save it for repeated use.

Following, we will explain an easy way to save your custom designed objects and how to work with them. One can create custom cutouts, shapes, holes, etc. by combining objects, which are already available in Front Panel Designer. The aggregate of such a group of objects is called a macro object.

How can I create a macro object?

The following screenshot shows you an example of a macro object. You can create a macro object by grouping two or more objects together. To do this, insert your objects, select them, click on Selection in the menu bar, and then choose Grouping from the dropdown. The macro object in our example is a group of a drilled and a rectangular hole.



How do I save my marcro object so I can use it again?

After you have created your grouped object, right click on it, and then choose Create macro object from the menu. A new window will open, where you can save your macro object. Click on Create macro file, and then enter a name. Your new file has been added to the list Macro file. Think of this new file as a folder, where you can save all of your objects. Next, you want to name the object itself. Type a name in the field Name of the new Macro, and click OK. In the screenshot below we named our macro file Test and our object Test Macro 1.

You can save every macro object you will design in your new file or create new files as needed. For example, we created another macro object and saved it under the name Test Macro 3 in the Testfile (see screen shot).




The next time we want to use Test Macro 1, we click Insert in the menu bar, select Macro object from the dropdown, and then we choose Test Macro 1 from our Test file.

Where is the reference point of my macro object?

The reference point of your macro is the red cross in the grouped object. The green crosses are the reference points of the objects you used to create the macro object.
You can change the reference point of your macro object by double clicking on it. The Group Properties window will open. In this window you can change the reference point by either clicking Reference point of an object, which will use the reference point of one of the original objects of the macro; or you can choose one of the standard reference points by clicking on one of the choices in the Reference point section.

As you see in the following screen shot, we chose the rectangular hole as our reference point of our object.



     
Project of the month:
Laser Control Box
(Courtesy of Alex Hay,
Photon Manufacturing)
 
 
The panels we built for our project of the month traveled pretty far - and pretty high. They went all the way up to the top of Hong Kong's skyscrapers, where they are used as laser control boxes. The photo above shows the lasers in action - they are the source of the green beams emanating from the top of the buildings.
 
 
 
For this project, our customer provided us with three 3U Rack panels, which we milled to his specifications. Each panel has two logos engraved on it, see a close up of one below.The prices for these panels were $87.09, $64.28, and $74.21 (from top to bottom), these include the milling, infill, and hpgl imports.
 
 

More examples of hpgl imports

 
 

Contact Us
Phone (206) 768-0602
info@frontpanelexpress.com
 
 
   
                 

Front Panel Express - 5959 Corson Avenue South, Suite I - Seattle, WA 98108
Phone (206) 768-0602 - Fax (206) 768-0679 - www.frontpanelexpress.com - info@frontpanelexpress.com